Best job I ever had

One of my best jobs ever was shortly after I left college, and began working in the real world again. Contrary to popular belief, the work doesn’t come rolling in due to your fantastic portfolio – it trickles in by word of mouth, usually from the people that you know in the business world. I can count on one hand, the number of clients that have contacted me initially to commission a job. It’s a cuththroat world, and you need to utilise any contacts you have in order to get started. In this case, a friend of my wife had a husband in the publishing world, and he was in the process of getting a guide book together about the Bamburgh & Seahouses areas of Northumberland. I received a fixed budget, a timescale of two weeks in July, and a written brief of the exact shots required to illustrate the prose by Steve Newman – local author and historian. To cut a long story short, I spent two weeks walking up and down the coast at all times of day photographing every bit of the Northumberland coast between Holy Island and Seahouses. No people were allowed in the shots, so I didn’t need model releases, and the weather was glorious from day one. You couldn’t call it work. My favourite shot of them all was taken shortly after sunrise at the harbour in Seahouses. There are a number of wooden ticket booths, for the boat trips out to the Farne Islands. This particular boot was replaced a few years ago, so this image has now been committed to the history books. The sun was just above the horizon, and the place was completely deserted. I shot all of the ticket booths in turn, with a bit of on-camera flash with the diffuser fitted. This one was by far the most colourful however.

I had to give it a bit of oomph in post-production, and removed the electricity & phone cables that ran from the small mast at the top. It made the guide book (still available from good book shops worldwide), and remains one of my favourite images to this date. I might re-visit the location in the summer and re-shoot the booths as a tryptic project (I think there are 3 of them). The shot at the top sums up the whole project in one image. Lush job.